BPOSitive : Migration-Onboarding

Migration Webinar Series

Brett Hill — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:05:00 GMT

Wanted to let you know that there will be a new webinar series starting up.

You will definitly want to attend these to get the latest information on migrating to BPOS.

See http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/2009/11/13/announcing-the-migration-webinar-series.aspx for details.

-brett

Q&A on the new Powershell commands for BPOS Migration

Brett Hill — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:55:00 GMT

In the just announced service release, you'll find a mention of the following powershell commands.

Enable-MSOnlineUser
Get-MSOnlineSubscription
Set-MSOnlineUserPassword

Q: What do these do?

These can be used together or sepearlty to help manage a migration or adminster your accounts.

Typically, you would run Get-MSOnlineSubcrtption to return a a GUID associated with the type of liscneses available. This determines what kinds of services can be activated for users, then you use that GUID do Enable-MSOnlineUser. If you assign an Exchange Online lisence the user will have a mailbox assigned. At the same time, one of the parameters allows you to set the password for the user. In addition, you can set the password later for any user with the Set-MSOnlineUserPassword script.

Q: Why are these needed?

When you use directory synch to create users, users need to be activated before they can use mail or other services. This script provides an automated way of activating users and is faster than usin the admin console. Since it's a script, you can add code to intelligently scope the activation.

In addition, when activating uses, you can set the password to a known or generated value and add code to have the user emailed about the activation.

Finally, the set password script allows a BPOS admin to change a users password from powershell rather than having to login to the admin center. Very handy.

Q: When can I use them?

The scripts willl be implemented in a new version of the Migration Tool which is scheduled to be shipped when the deoplyments are completed. This should be by the end of October at the latest.

Q: Where can I get details on the syntax and use

When the migration tool is released, the scripts will have built in help that shows the syntax. We are planning on some demos and the like to be released soon. As a tip, you might want to check the Microsoft Online documentation as that could be udpated any time with details on the scripts.http://www.microsoft.com/resources/Technet/en-us/MSOnline/bpos/html/1843e98e-1c13-409d-8d56-c67f0cb87f5e.htm

Also, I might add that you can expect more powershell fun in the future.

Creating restricted distribution lists in BPOS with Dirsynch

Brett Hill — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:05:00 GMT

Discovered today that the directory synchronization tool copies permissions with distribution lists.

DirSync syncs the following AD attributes that control who can and cannot send to a DL:

· AuthOrig (Authorized Originators: Only these Users can send to the DL)

· UnauthOrig (Unauthorized Originators: Anyone BUT these users can send to the DL)

· dLMemRejectPerms (Unauthorized DLs: Anyone but members of these DLs can send to this DL)

· dLMemSubmitPerms (Authorized DLs: No one but members of these DLs can send to this DL)

· msExchRequireAuthToSendTo (Only Authenticated Senders can send to the DL, blocks External senders, doesn’t work for other CCS customers)

You can control this in the Exchange 2007 Message delivery system UI or in AD.

Thanks to Tarkek Dawoud in BPOS engineering for this detail.

-brett

Could be a First for Microsoft! Intneral Technical Wiki now Pushed to Quickstartonlineservices.com.

Brett Hill — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:10:00 GMT

Internally, the Technical Product Management team had a Wiki they were using to keep track of all kind of issues. FAQs that were being asked all the time about things like public folders, mail enabled lists, how to work with proxy servers, when is feature "X" coming , blah blah blah.

The cool thing about this particular wiki is that it is a living resource that is actively updated, and used to drive meeting agendas, workflows, feature priorities, and other details. In other words, it's an important tool that we use here.

Well, we had that thought that most of this information would be really useful to Partners as well. It's current. It often has details that are difficult to find, and is relatively comprehensive. What if we could find a way to push the internal Wiki into Quickstartservicesonline and flag items we wanted copied so that partners would have access to the same agile resources we have?! So that's what we did. We made this even more useful by adding all the checklist items from the Migration and Discover whitepaper I recently wrote as line items in the wiki making it a great place to go for the latest questions you should ask before tackling a migration plan.

You can of course search for any topic or click on one of the topic of interest. Say you're interested SSO Auth Proxy (Single Sign On Authentication with a Proxy), click on the link and you'll see :

BPOS-S Single Sign-In Client (SIC as some refer to it) currently does NOT support Outbound Internet Authenticating Proxy Server configurations. Users will receive SIC messages stating …”unable to establish a secure connection..”. This is typically due to a Connectivity Issues with the BPOS-S Single Sign-On Services (SSO Web Services), which has been seen when connecting over the Internet from an On-Premise Authenticating Proxy Server. These servers can be of any flavor, such as Blue Coat, ISA, Threat Management Gateway (v.Next of ISA), etc., as long as they are configured for Outbound Internet Authentication.

Resolution/Workaround

1.       Outbound Authenticating Proxy Servers MUST be using the NTLM Authentication method for the below to work!!!!

2.       When the below snippet is placed into the SignIn.exe.config file, this allows the SSO client to pass the logged in users Domain credentials to the Authenticating Proxy Server, allowing Outbound Internet Connectivity:

a.       Caveat: The user must be logged into the machine as a Domain User Account and that account must be granted Outbound Internet Connectivity for the below to work.

1.       Browse to the following location to modify the SignIn.exe.config file: x:\Program Files\Microsoft Online Services\Sign In

2.       Modify the SignIn.exe.config file, using Notepad.exe or other Application of choice:

3.       Save the File

a.       Logout and Exit SIC

4.       Restart SIC

<system.net>

    <defaultProxy useDefaultCredentials="true">

      <proxy usesystemdefault="True" />

    </defaultProxy>

        </system.net>

This gives the ability to get information out to partners faster and easier than ever before. This is all good news for partners who need ready information without having to wait for formal editing, vetting, and signoff. However, the downside is of course you'll find the content is bit rougher and there will be some inconsistencies. That's the trade off, but we think it's a good one. Hopefully you'll find this useful.

This is only available to Microsoft Partners.

Thanks,

brett

Migration Toolkit for Partners

Brett Hill — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:47:00 GMT

Below, you'll find links to some previously unavailable materails that will be very useful for Partners as they make plans to migrate a customer to BPOS. Be sure to check out the Discovery Checklist, as we well as the lecture in Migration by the engineering team. In addition, you'll find some documents from Support to help you figure error messages and their meaning when you use the migration tools.

Business Productivity Online Suite Migration Toolkit for Partners

Welcome to the Business Productivity Online Suite Migration Toolkit World Partner Conference Edition. Sign into www.quickstartonlineservices.com with your Windows Live ID then click on the below links to access the content.

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite Migration Planning and Discovery Checklist

A detailed listing of tasks and issues to consider when planning a migration to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite. Includes guidance for Trials, Choosing Services, Network Considerations, Workstation Preparation, as well as the individual services and migration. Links to available online resources are provided for each task.

· Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite Onboarding and Discovery Checklist for Partners

· Customer acceptance testing and checklist sample

Migration Troubleshooting and Implementation Depth Guides

These papers, produced by the Business Productivity Online Suite onboarding and support teams, provide detailed guidance for migration troubleshooting as well as step-by-step guidance for migration from a POP3 environment

· Migration Troubleshooting and Implementation Depth Guides

Migration Summit Workshop Recording and Presentations

These are the decks and presentations from the Business Productivity Online Suite Partner Migration Summit held in Redmond in fall of ‘09. Presenters from engineering, support and the product teams created and delivered these lectures packed with highly useful information real world migration experience including migrations from Exchange, POP3, and 3rd party systems

· Migration Process Overview

· Migration from Exchange to Exchange Online

· Migrating from 3rd Party Platforms

· Migrating from POP3 and IMAP

· Site Planning and Preparation

Guides and Resources

A listing of valuable Migration and onboarding resources. Includes links to the SharePoint Online Infrastructure Planning Guide, Microsoft Assessment and Planning toolkit, and a Customer Acceptance Test Plan checklist

· Microsoft Online Planning (MAP) and Discovering Tool

· Exchange Online Infrastructure Planning Guide

· SharePoint Online Infrastructure Planning Guide

· Business Productivity Online Suite Migration Toolkit

· Migration Whitepaper

BPOS Discovery and Planning Checklist for Partners - Prelimary Version

Brett Hill — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 01:31:00 GMT

I've been workng on this document for Partners to provide guidance on issues you should consider when evaluting a customer's business for a potential move to BPOS. It's pretty comprehensive, but not exhaustive. For those of you attending the WPC coming up, you can get this document https://www.quickstartonlineservices.com/Documents/Business%20Productivity%20Online%20Suite%20Discovery%20Checklist.docx and a few more never seen before jewels as part of a Partner Migratin Tookit we built. There are only 400 of these to be distributed on CD at the conference, but have no fear, it will be on the quickstart site soon. I wanted to pre-post this document for partners to get feedback.

Please note: This particular document is made specfiically for Partners so you have to be a Microsoft Certified Parnter to get to it.

Thanks,

brett

Migrate to Exchange Online with no on premise tools: Interview with Geeman Yip of BitTitan

Brett Hill — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:56:00 GMT

Many migration scenarios revolve around moving data from an on-premises server, such as Exchange Server or Lotus Notes, to Exchange Online. BitTitan, the makers of MigrationWiz have another vision: migrating data from one hosted e-mail environment to another. In this installment of the Partner Migration Series, I speak with Geeman Yip of BitTitan about their product and how it works.

Q: MigrationWiz is focused on what kind of migration scenario?

A: MigrationWiz migrates any IMAP, POP or Exchange e-mail account that is accessible via the Internet. So that includes Hotmail, Gmail, America Online, and Windows Live, in addition to any hosted Exchange provider.

Q: So basically, you log into your Website, create an account, indicate the number of mailboxes to migrate, point to all the right locations and then I’m done?

A: Correct. The beauty of our service is that there are no tools to install. You use a web browser to access mailboxes on the Internet, and the migration occurs through our highly-secure data center.

To listen to the entire interview with Geeman Yip, click here.

Partner Migration Series: Interview with Steven Pivnik, Co-CEO Binary Tree

Brett Hill — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:32:00 GMT

Binary Tree has been in the business of developing products and services for cross platform migration since 1993, and they are a migration partner for Microsoft Online Services. As a market leader in Notes migration, it's no surprise they are one of the first to offer Notes to Exchange Online migration services and software. On May 20, I interviewed Steven Pivnik, Co-CEO of Binary Tree, about their solutions for Notes to Exchange Online services migrations.

Q: How did you start making migration tools for Microsoft Online Services? How did you start in the migration business?

A: We started Binary Tree in 1993 primarily as a Lotus Notes service organization doing a lot of Lotus Notes custom application development. We were hired by JP Morgan at that time to build a migration tool to take them from the mail platform they were on to Lotus Notes. We wrote a utility to do it and soon we were asked by another company to write a tool for migrating data from GroupWise to Lotus Notes. We said "Sure!" And then we had another project to migrate data from Netscape. And from those projects, a migration practice mushroomed into 24 different utilities to migrate to Lotus Notes. IBM licensed those tools and shipped them worldwide with the Notes CD, which gave us overnight worldwide notoriety in the Lotus Notes market space.

Click here for the full interview.

TLS on Local Exchange server with BPOS

Brett Hill — Sat, 23 May 2009 05:55:00 GMT

Hi,

Wanted to post a message from Ryan Phillips, BPOS Tech guy extrordinare and all around nice guy working on BPOS at Microsoft.

This is a nice tech summary that you should file under migration and co-existence details.

-brett

----------------------------

Did you know that BPOS-S provides guidance on how to configure an On-Premise Messaging environment to use Transporter Layer Security (TLS) when sending/receiving messages securely. The documentation states that you must install a certificate in your On-Premise Outbound Mail Server however, this is ONLY true if this Messaging Server requires Inbound messages to be securely received. After following the guidance in the document/TechNet article listed above, the On-Premise Mail Server will be able to send/receive secure email via TLS.

Note: To receive TLS messages from EHS or any other Messaging Systems, a certificate must be applied to the On-Premise server that receives Internet email messages, which is defined by the SMTP Domain’s MX record. By installing a publicly verifiable (VeriSign, etc.), the sending server will check the On-Premise Message Server’s certificate to make sure:

1. The name being used to connect to the On-Premise Mail Server matches the certificates Common Name (CN)

2. The certificate is not expired (Certificate Revocation List – CRL)

3. The certificate is trusted by the sending server (Trusted Room Certification Authorities)

Once the above has been completed, the On-Premise environment will Send/Receive messages via TLS. Until an On-Premise certificate is applied, the On-Premise server will only be able to Send TLS.

…and know you know J

Ryan J. Phillips

BPOS-S Service Account Manager

Useful Migration and onboarding references

Brett Hill — Fri, 08 May 2009 21:43:00 GMT

Here are some useful links to the latest info on Migration and (and some onboarding) docs and resources. The Migration paper was recently updated and expanded significantly. Also, REALLY worth reviewing are the Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for Exchange and SharePoint online. These papers provide a roadmap to features that you should identify as potential issues or opportunities when mapping a customer’s existing system and architecture to the features and capabilities of BPOS-S.

Migration White Paper

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/info.aspx?na=90&p=&SrcDisplayLang=en&SrcCategoryId=&SrcFamilyId=25350815-5c57-441a-b7fb-329ff5fe14b3&u=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2fD%2fF%2f6%2fDF6C3D9D-A10B-4245-9909-7A5E660D303C%2fMigrate+to+Microsoft+Online.doc

Online Documentation:

http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/bpos/index.html?page=html%2Fd90be1d1-83c4-4f0c-b25b-816fbf321ff3.htm

Directory Synchronization and Migration Tool Deep Dive Webcast

https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/partners1/view?id=35NNMF&role=attend&pw=d33c0a

Engineering Team Blog Posts on Migration

http://blogs.technet.com/msonline/archive/tags/Migration+and+Coexistence/default.aspx

Migration Toolkit

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=b4d668f4-26b0-4b3c-8b13-5e0275948257&displaylang=en&tm

Public Migration Forum

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/onlineservicesmigrationandcoexistence/threads/

Microsoft Online Assessment and Planning Toolkit

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/solutionaccelerators/dd537571.aspx

Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for Exchange Online

http://services.social.microsoft.com/feeds/FeedItem?feedId=354f0d03-5d74-4af6-9796-30fef164210f&itemId=0cc66008-69b3-4644-9746-26e3bd99c80a&title=Exchange+Online%3a+Evaluating+Software-plus-Services&uri=http%3a%2f%2fdownload.microsoft.com%2fdownload%2f5%2fB%2fC%2f5BC966BC-47D8-41DF-95F2-FA9A2D816258%2fExchange+Online+-+Evaluating+Software-plus-Services.zip&k=VlfVUCHipE2NkymGMOWXaW4%2bUXr8uJTZk2TZM%2f0sBKk%3d

Beta Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for SharePoint Online

https://connect.microsoft.com/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?SiteID=14&DownloadID=7925

BPOS Migration Webcast and new Lotus Notes Migration options

Brett Hill — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:38:00 GMT

Just a couple of days ago I did a webcast on BPOS Migration. You can find it here:

Microsoft Online Services Infrastructure Planning and Migration

WWE REGISTRATION URL:
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032407793&Culture=en-US
LIVE MEETING REPLAY URL:
https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/mseventsbmo/view?id=1032407793&role=attend&pw=633BBEEA

AND, binarytree has announced a Lotus Notes migration tool and service:

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-28-2009/0005014695&EDATE=#linktopagebottom

Plus a webinar on Note Migration:

http://www.binarytree.com/website/msg/home.nsf/fnotescompete!OpenForm

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 Now Available!

Brett Hill — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:36:00 GMT

Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.2 Now Available!

The MAP toolkit has been updated to include testing for sysetm readiness for BPOS deployment. This system will inventory online resourcesa and create reports tell you what needs to be done to get ready for deployment.

Some if it's features include:

In-Depth Readiness Reporting

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) generates reports containing both summary and detailed assessment results for each migration scenario. The results are provided in both Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word documents. Reports are generated for the following scenarios:

· Identification of currently installed Windows Client operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows Vista. This tool also reports if desktops have anti-virus and anti-malware programs installed or if the Windows Firewall is turned on.

Identification of currently installed Windows Server operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows Server 2008.
Identification of currently installed Microsoft Office software and recommendations for migration to Microsoft Office 2007.
Detailed assessment and reporting of server utilization gathered using the Performance Metrics Wizard.
Recommendations for server consolidation and virtual machine placement using Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2.
Assessment of client machines, servers, and the technology environment for the implementation of Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid).
Reporting of SNMP-enabled devices found in the environment during inventory.
Security Assessment: Create a report on existing client computers to identify machines where Security Center, antispyware, antivirus or firewall products are not found or are not running correctly.
Microsoft SQL Server Assessment: Create a report on existing client and server computers to identify machines where Microsoft SQL Server instances are found.
Virtual Machine Inventory: Create reports that identify virtual machines in your computer environment.
Power Savings Assessment: Create a proposal to identify server and client machines running in your environment and understand the power management capabilities available.
Optimized Desktop Scenario Selection Tool: This tool defines common-usage scenarios to help organizations choose the client computing scenarios that best meet the unique needs of their businesses. Use the Windows Optimized Desktop Scenario Selection Tool to identify one or more Optimized Desktop scenarios that suit your organization’s needs.

Note The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) will generate localized reports for Windows Vista migration, Office 2007 migration, and non-Windows devices if the Display Language, configured on the computer generating the reports is set to German, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Very nice!

Strongly suggested.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb977556.aspx?SA_CE=NOT-MAP-BLOG-MAPBLOG-20081103

Virtual Airlift BPOS Webcasts Posted !

Brett Hill — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:09:00 GMT

You want details? How about lectures from the people making the services on the latest version of BPOS hitting the web this weekend! I'm super excited to annoucne tha availability of the Virtual Airlift webcasts on the Technical tab of this site. New features for Exchange, the administration console and other parts of the service are all detailed by the PMs at Microsoft in charge of those features.

You want to know about how secure our data centers are? Check out Mike Ziocks highly rated presentation https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Data_Center_Security_And_Reliability_110k.wmv

Interested in SharePoint Online capabilites? See it for yourself https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/SharePoint_Online_110k.wmv

How about Exchange Online and the new Conference Room features? See Ed Wu in his psychedlic shirt at https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Exchange_Online_110k.wmv

Migration and Co-existence details and demo: https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Migration_And_Coexistence_110k.wmv

Of course, there's using the Administration Center including how to add a custom domain to BPOS: https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Microsoft_Online_Admin_Center_110k.wmv

David Wang presents a demo and details about the single sign on tool. Important details are included about how to deploy and configure. https://www.discoveronlineservices.com/Documents/Accessing_Microsoft_Online_Services_110k.wmv

Check out all the Virtual Airlift content on the Technical Tab!

Also, note there's new Business content too on the Business tab.